


Shapeshifting and Shenanigans

by bendingwind



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Shapeshifting, avengerkink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's a hawk during the day, and Phil's a wolf by night. There's a curse, a couple of misunderstandings, and a lot of fond note-leaving involved.</p><p>Or: Magic sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [octopedingenue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopedingenue/gifts).



> Inspired by the avengerkink prompt:
> 
> _Everyone has now seen the awesome earlier prompt/fill with Hawkeye shapeshifting into a real hawk, right? RIGHT. So the next perfectly logical step is a full-on lovers-tragically-separated-by-curse Ladyhawke homage, with Clint cursed to transform into a hawk by day and Coulson into a wolf by night, never again to meet, etcetera. Cue tragic romance with happy ending! You can use the original eclipse curse-breaker or make your own._
> 
> _Bonus points if they AREN'T a couple at the time and at first they think the curse isn't a big deal / is funny / is at most inconvenient. Only over time they realize they miss each other and slowly (through letters & Post-Its & stuff) fall in love and angst._
> 
> _(double bonus points if Tony tries to befriend wolf!Coulson with doggy treats. triple bonus points if hawk!Hawk lurks in the cafeteria ceiling and swoops down to steal people's lunches.)_
> 
> Disclaimer: I have never actually read "the awesome earlier prompt/fill with Hawkeye shapeshifting into a real hawk". The ~~phil~~ fill was more of a run-and-jump-off-a-cliff-of-insanity starting point type thing.

There is an ancient proverb that every SHIELD agent learns shortly after their recruitment to the program; magic fucking sucks. Most new agents take it as a joke, and they generally crash and burn when circumstances make it apparent that it is _a very real warning_ to any and all employees of the agency.

So. Magic fucking sucks.

Phil’s been an agent of SHIELD for going on eleven years, and he’s had a couple of very unfortunate encounters with magic before. They can generally be hand-waved with mumbled things about radiation and atomic vibrations and a bunch of other nonsense about science that the world hasn’t quite figured out yet. It’s close enough to the truth.

This whole Swan Princess thing they’ve suddenly got going on, though, really takes the cake.

It starts, as an unfortunate percentage of their dealings with magic do, with the Enchantress. She has fewer lofty ideals than Loki and the same creepy love-hate obsession with Thor, so it’s really no surprise when she goes after the team. It isn’t even much of a surprise that she targets Phil, because Thor loudly declares him an excellent ally in public far too often for Phil’s comfort. That she targets Barton isn’t surprising, either, because Barton maybe lied and told Thor that it was Migardian tradition that gods flew all descended from the Noble Family of Barton around Midgard on request. And that was a huge _maybe_ , because Phil does not want to deal with that mess of paperwork.

Technically, none of it is _at all surprising,_ but it’s hard to shake the feeling of surprise as he curls up on the floor of his office in the shape of a wolf. He’ll have to report this as soon as he gets his opposable thumbs back and can actually open the door. That’s assuming he even gets his thumbs back—and the Enchantress’ such-and-such by day, such-and-such by night monologue hadn’t just been for dramatic purposes—or the rest of his human body. He wishes she’d at least been clear about who exactly she was cursing, so he could have been prepared.

Finally, after hours of boredom and an experience in learning an entirely new set of muscles necessary to _hold it in_ in a canine body, he changes back. It must be dawn outside, which means that he needs coffee, then Fury, then paperwork. He shuffles back into the slightly wrecked suit and nearly makes it out of the door when some sort of obscene _squawking_ noise issues from the ceiling tiles above him.

Phil sighs. There are days when he wishes this wasn’t his life. He pulls his chair out from its neat position behind his desk and climbs up, carefully removing one of the ceiling tiles close to the source of the noise. A very disgruntled-looking hawk flutters down and blinks up at him with an expression that is way too familiar.

“Got you too, huh?” he asks with a sigh, and the hawk screeches indignantly. It flutters its wings in a poor attempt at flight, and sort of scrambles sideways instead. Phil fights to hold in the urge to laugh, because that would just be cruel. “I was wondering if maybe she’d missed.”

The hawk glares up at him as if it knows what he’s thinking, and he reaches down to gently pick it up, mindful of its wings. It struggles for a moment and then, finally, seems to understand what he’s doing and settles, though its glare doesn’t fade in the slightest.

“This is going to be one hell of a briefing,” Phil informs him, and hopes belatedly that this really is shapeshifted Clint. He might not actually be able to live it down if it turns out to be some random hawk that found its way into the ventilation.

He appreciates a lot of things about SHIELD, but at this moment the most relevant is the fact that he can walk through the halls covered in wolf hair and a tattered suit with a very uncomfortable-looking hawk glaring at everyone from between his hands, and no one bats an eyelash. He finds Fury in the Director’s Office off the HQ command, takes a moment to be grateful that they’re not aboard the Helicarrier, and then walks in without knocking. Fury rotates in his chair and greets him with a raised eyebrow as he takes in the state of Phil’s suit and the bird in his hands.

“You can go ahead and report on what the fuck is going on here any time now,” Fury says, and Phil realizes that he hasn’t actually gotten around to saying anything yet.

“Sorry, Director. We seem to have a problem.”

Fury grimaces at him, a clear sign that he hasn’t had his caffeine yet and would like Phil to hurry the fuck up and explain. Fair enough; it’s not even fifteen past the asscrack of dawn.

“The Enchantress’ curse took, apparently. I was transformed into a wolf before I could leave my office yesterday evening, and spent the night there. When I prepared to leave this morning and report to you, I was interrupted by noises coming from my ceiling. I recovered a hawk that I am fairly confident is Agent Barton, transformed in a similar manner during the daylight hours.”

He sets Barton down on Fury’s desk, gently, and stands at attention. The hawk glares at Fury; Fury glares back.

“It’s definitely Barton,” Fury says with a grunt. “What the hell was he doing in your ceiling, anyway?”

Phil would like to know the answer to that himself, actually, but Fury continues speaking. “Fuck, it is way too early for this shit. Coulson, go get me coffee, and then call the team together. And get Strange on the line. _Someone_ had better have some ideas about this.”

“Should I attempt to contact Barton as well, just in case?” Phil asks. This, at least, he is familiar with. It’s surprising, how calming it is to have actual orders on how they’re going to deal with the latest Really Weird Thing SHIELD has come across.

Fury waves a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah, now get out of my sight until I have had _at least_ one and a half caramel mocha lattes.”

Phil nods, scoops the Barton hawk back up off the desk, and makes his way to the Starbucks across the street from the agency. They’re a government institution; they can’t afford to be picky about sources of caffeine, and besides, the Starbucks knows him. They won’t bat an eyelash at the hawk he’s cradling, either. He collects two caramel mocha lattes for Fury, an iced white mocha for himself, and straight black with a couple shots of espresso for the rest of the team to mix as they please, all arranged in a fairly elaborate configuration of drink holders. The barista looks at him nervously as he coordinates Barton the hawk and all the drinks, but he’s carried far larger, far more precarious loads in his time at SHIELD, and he manages. He weaves through pedestrian traffic with a grace born of practice and enters the SHIELD building. By the time he makes it back to Fury’s office, the Avengers have assembled. They frankly look a little twitchy at being together with no apparent threat in their vicinity, but at least no one’s punching anyone else yet.

He sets Barton on the desk once again. When he protests with a shriek that makes everyone but Romanoff wince, Phil relocates Barton to a chair of his very own with a roll of his eyes. Barton flaps his wings again, like he might try to fly, and nearly falls off the chair. Phil gives him a glare of his own, hoping it will persuade him to _stay. put._

“Is that—” Natasha begins, but Fury interrupts.

“Coffee,” he insists, “Then debriefing.” He reaches for his own drinks, which Phil dutifully hands over before setting the drink carrier in the middle of the table. He just manages to swipe his drink before the rest disappear (with a start, he realizes he bought one too many, but it works out alright because Tony has already chugged his first and is well on his way to finishing the one Phil got for Barton).

Fury finishes off his second drink and finally allows the debriefing to begin by directing a nod at Phil. Phil coughs and stands, and then begins.

“As you may recall, we had an encounter with the Enchantress yesterday at oh-thirteen-hundred. She worked a number of spells which we were able to dodge or have removed by our resident specialist, but it would appear that we missed one. She monologued at considerable length about curses and sunrise and sunset—we’ll be needing the recordings from your suit on the incident, Mr. Stark, by the way—and it appears that she did indeed place a curse in the process. At night, I become a wolf, and during the day, Barton becomes a hawk. The changes appear to coincide with sunrise and sunset, precisely.”

For a moment, no one says anything. Natasha eyes the hawk very critically, and it shrugs its wings and _winks_ at her.

“Definitely Clint,” she agrees, and the room erupts into chaos as the rest of the Avengers try to talk over each other.

Fury clears his throat, and it shouldn’t be possible to hear it over the din of superheroes competing to be heard, but somehow it is. That surprises exactly no one, and the talking quickly peters out.

“We’re making arrangements to have another member brought onto the team—” Fury holds up a hand to waylay the immediate protests “—temporarily, until we can restore Agent Barton to full working order. It goes without saying that he is welcome to join all of you on any night ops that might occur. In the meantime, Coulson, Barton, I expect the two of you to remain together. You will both be exceedingly vulnerable in your… _altered…_ forms, so you will provide protection and companionship for each other. I’ll get a bed moved into your office, Coulson, I don’t want either of you off-base. Strange has apparently run off to some other dimension, so we’re going to have to wait until he turns up again to get a consult—we’ll have agents hunting down the Enchantress in the meantime. Anyone got any questions for me?”

The cacophony starts again. Fury glares them down, and gradually the conversation dies once again.

“Good, I’m glad we’ve got that all cleared up. Avengers, dismissed—and Coulson, get that bird out of my office before it starts shedding feathers on my furniture. He’s already clawed that chair to hell.”

Barton fluffs up his feathers, looking hilariously irritated for a bird.

Phil nods, picks up Barton, and follows the other Avengers as they file out of the room. Outside Fury’s office, they crowd around, staring at Barton.

“I’m going to have to remodel his floor,” Tony says, smirking.

“He’s still Clint, though, right, I mean, he can understand us?” Steve asks, looking concerned.

“—Possible that shapeshifting is a magic performed with wavelengths similar to gamma radiation, actually, I wonder if Strange will—” Banner manages to say before his rambling trails off into unintelligible muttering again.

“Mighty Clint, you make a most fetching bird of prey!” Thor declares.

Natasha reaches forward to pat Barton on the head, looking closer to laughter than Phil has ever seen her off an op.

“I’m pretty damn sure I dismissed all of you!” Fury shouts from his office, and the Avengers disperse. Natasha remains behind for just a moment, to pat Barton on the head again. Phil swears he hears her choke back a giggle, and she leans down to look the hawk in the eye.

“Call me when you’ve got the appropriate vocal cords for communication,” she says, and then she turns around to stride down the hall after her teammates, and Phil is left with a very, very unhappy hawk.

“This is going to mean _so much paperwork,”_ he groans, and then, “I guess we ought to teach you to actually fly.”

He thinks Barton might actually perk up at a bit at that last offer. 

Phil slips back into his office half an hour before sunset. It’s already been refitted; he could swear it’s about three feet wider, and they’ve shoved his desk to one side and added a human bed, a dog bed, and a perch of some sort for Barton the hawk. Hawking paraphernalia is scattered across the desk (including a hawking glove, which will make his life _so much easier_ if he can just teach Barton to stand on it without falling off). Barton sees it and tries to fluff his wings; Phil sets him down on the perch, pulls on the glove, and offers his arm. Barton flutters his wings, hops on, and promptly falls off. He flaps his wings and manages to stay airborne just long enough for Phil to catch him, though Phil ends up with some nasty scratches in the process.

“We’ll work on that tomorrow,” Phil says with a sigh, setting Barton back on the desk. Someone knocks on the door and Phil opens it to receive a duffle bag that he recognizes as Barton’s, and a suitcase that belongs to him. He settles both of them neatly under the bed, locks the documents on his desk that are above Barton’s clearance in the safe behind his desk, and undresses, hanging his suit neatly from a rack protruding from one end of the bed. At least they managed to make the space functional. After a moment’s pause, he pulls three other suits out of his suitcase, smoothes out a wrinkle or two, and hangs them up as well.

Barton the hawk watches him with eerily judgmental eyes. Phil shrugs and glares back a little. The sun must set somewhere, because suddenly Barton is sprawled across his desk and Phil’s looking up at him from the floor.

“Uuugh,” Barton groans, rubbing his head and hoisting himself off his desk. He stares down at Phil for a moment, and then smirks.

“Huh. Cute.”

Phil expected him to have more to say, but Barton seems more interested in sleeping. Barton shuffles out of his outer layer of clothing and burrows into the bed in his boxers, leaving one arm dangling over the side of the mattress.

Phil _does not_ stroll over and lick Barton’s hand, but he wants to. Instead, he crawls over to the doggy bed on unsteady, spindly legs and tries to settle in for the night. He remembers that he forgot to leave a note requesting that a direct path to the bathroom be left clear for him, and whimpers a little.

Magic. Fucking. Sucks.


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up in the morning on a very uncomfortable, lumpy sort of pillow that is wedged uncomfortably under his back, and he’s not wearing anything. That isn’t actually _that_ unusual, so he sits up, groans, and is met with the eyes of a very sleepy looking hawk peering down at him.

Right. Magic.

He hangs his dirty suit from the hook by the door for his PA to send in for cleaning later. There are a couple of pairs of sweats near the bottom of his suitcase; he slips into a pair of pants and a shirt and makes his way down to the locker room and the wonderfully warm showers there. He shaves, fluffs his hair and changes into a suit. By the time he gets back to his office, Barton has fallen asleep again, nestled weirdly in the untidy sheets of the bed. Phil quietly removes his documents from the safe and sets to work filing all the requisite forms for their current state of being. Normally, he’d have liked to have taken all this home to finish in front of a good, mindless episode of Hoarders, but he finishes paperwork with nearly the same speed in his office. He makes it to nearly eleven before he gives in to his stomach’s demands that he eat something.

Breakfasts in the SHIELD cafeteria are legendarily bad. As it turns out, that’s just another legend that is very, very true, and he ends up across the street at Starbucks again, with two donuts in one hand and coffee in the other. It’s the least healthy breakfast he’s eaten since college, but it’ll have to do. He pauses just before he leaves, wondering if he ought to bring Barton something, but he reminds himself that he has no idea what hawks are supposed to eat. Rats, maybe?

Either way, it’s probably not a good idea.

He gets through the remainder of the day with relatively little incident, though he feels like he’s getting significantly more attention as he carries Barton the hawk through the halls. Word must have gotten out. Barton does make a sort of cute pet, if you can get over the deadly talons and whatnot. He spends an hour with Barton after lunch helping him master the fine art of perching properly. They quickly establish that Barton is heavy and Phil can only hold his arm in the position necessary for him to perch there for so long. After that, Barton rides around on a leather harness slung over his shoulder. He seems to enjoy staring regally at SHIELD agents from his new perch, though it would probably go over better if Phil were just a little taller.

Phil remembers to leave a note specifying that someone _please_ leave him a way to get to the toilet that night. He starts to undress, but pauses to add a note to Barton reminding him to be back from the archery range before the sun rises. Phil is really _not_ going to hunt him down if he doesn’t make it back or deal with the paperwork when he gets stepped on. He finishes removing his shoes and suit, strips out of his boxers, and finally sits on the floor to wait. Barton seems to be eyeing him, and Phil curls up a little. He keeps on par with SHIELD regulations for agent fitness, but he’s no Captain America, that’s for sure. And then, just like the night before, he’s sitting uncomfortably as the industrial carpet bites into his bare ass, and the next he’s staring up at Barton. 

Barton seems more himself this time; he grins down at Phil, rubs him behind the ears (Phil definitely does not _pant_ over that, because he is human and very in control of his actions).

“Hungry?” Barton asks, “’Cause I’m starving. Haven’t eaten since before dawn. What do you say we hit up Nat’s secret stash of awesome food?”

That was supposed to be a myth, too. Phil decides to blame it all on magic and he follows Barton to one of the smaller rec rooms low in the building. They end up sprawled across the couch watching reruns of Cops, while Phil chews on some jerky and Barton inhales the better part of Natasha’s secret Pop-tart stash. Phil makes a note to leave a memo on healthy eating when he can write again, because the last thing they need is Barton falling completely out of shape. Eventually they make their way back to Phil’s office, where Barton settles onto the human bed and Phil curls up on his doggy bed. He listens to Barton breathe and shift for a while and then, finally, sigh. 

“Get up here, Coulson,” Barton says, and Phil can’t quite stop his ears from perking up. “I saw you trying to work those kinks out of your back this morning. I’m not about to be responsible for unleashing grumpy-Coulson on the team.”

Phil maybe growls a little at that, he’s not proud of it, but he leaps up beside Barton. The man’s surprisingly warm as he pulls Phil close and buries his face in Phil’s fur.

Phil tries to recall if he ever read anything about Barton having a pet before. Soon, Barton’s breathing evens out into snores, and Phil drifts off into sleep after him.

He wakes in the morning to find Barton the hawk perched beside him, asleep, and a note from Barton mentioning that he really thinks they ought to get some sort of mini-fridge so he doesn’t have to hunt for himself and/or brave the horror of the SHIELD cafeteria in the early hours of the morning. Phil makes a couple of calls and even gets a lab tech from R&D to bring groceries to go with the new mini-fridge. 

After that, things fall into a strange sort of routine. Barton picks up the habit of pecking at Phil’s hair or shrieking a certain number of times to convey various messages. The Avengers have adopted Spiderman as Barton’s temporary replacement, and Barton quickly picks up the habit of lightly biting at Phil’s ear to signal that he would shoot the kid if he had the opportunity (Phil knows the reason because Barton gleefully leaves him a note to that effect, and it happens often enough that Phil takes to wearing a thin protective piece of plastic over the sensitive skin). After the third ream of paper Barton destroys while half asleep, Phil gets an actual whiteboard for them to leave notes on. It reminds him altogether too much of really awful college roommates. Bad memories notwithstanding, their lives slot together in a surprisingly smooth manner.

He gets used to Barton doing his non-suit laundry because apparently they have different opinions on how often casualwear needs to be cleaned. He develops the habit of picking up dinner for Barton before they change, and Barton retaliates by showing up with breakfast in the mornings. Phil takes to waking when Clint does and accompanying him down to the range, and they jokingly develop a system of Canine-to-English translation on the white board. It’s almost like having a social life, but Phil isn’t surprised when it doesn’t entirely work out.

By the end of the second week, he can tell that Barton is starting to pine a little for regular human interaction. The Avengers are busy with the latest wave of AIM and when they finish fighting, they go straight to Stark Tower to fall into bed and rest. Even Phil, who spends his days interacting with other humans despite the fact that he’s banned from the Avengers Initiative, starts to feel it. He misses the days when they would find an empty rec room and lounge around with a box of pizza and the history channel until their minds shut down. The pizza makes Phil want to vomit when he eats it as a wolf, and the history channel is significantly less entertaining without their usual banter. Sometimes the other Avengers come by to keep Barton company late in the evening, if they haven’t had too long a day or if they’re off-duty due to injury, and Phil tends to slip away to his office and let them be. Barton needs the opportunity to socialize with someone who isn’t an animal at the time. Also, Thor’s attempts at petting him quickly prove to be better avoided. The way an Asgardian god pets his hounds does _not_ transfer well to a perfectly mortal wolf.

Though he still considers himself to have gotten the better half of the deal, it’s surprising how much he misses having evenings to do whatever he likes. He misses evenings with Barton and playing cards with Natasha and Fury, who are the only people who’ve ever presented anything resembling a challenge to him. He spends every last second with his opposable thumbs trying to keep on top of his work, and there is nearly no time left over to wind down and socialize.

He feels somewhat guilty that his favorite evenings are the ones when the Avengers are busy elsewhere, and Barton cleans his bow while he rubs Phil behind the ears. There isn’t quite a human equivalent to explain how good it feels, except maybe for a _really good snog_ (a very non-sexual snog, mind). Most evenings, after Phil has finished his work, he changes into sweats and takes Barton the hawk down to the gym and they practice Barton’s flying. The first week is mostly a hilarious collection of face-flops, but eventually Barton gets the hang of his wings. Once he’s mastered flying, some evenings are spent with Barton the hawk perching in strange places and leaping out at agents, which is probably the funniest thing Phil has watched in his entire life. Though he never says as much, he thinks Barton is deliberately trying to dream up entertaining scenarios; whenever he looks up from laughing, Barton is peering at him, his tiny bird head tilted to one side.

As the days pass, his notes become longer. It’s sort of surreal, transforming his usual conversations with Barton from fast, witty one-liners to complete paragraphs, but it makes him feel less isolated. Barton writes back, with hilarious-slash-cringe-worthy results, given that he barely consented to get a GED when SHIELD told him he had no choice if he wanted to stay on. Barton’s intelligence has always revealed itself in other forms, and he can read as well as any agent on base, but the circus where he was raised was hardly intent on quality education.

Phil swipes a red dry erase marker from accounting and marks up Barton’s grammar and spelling mistakes. Barton retaliates by stealing a purple marker from somewhere and writing smartass comebacks to Phil’s corrections. The purple marker turns out to be permanent, so their notes become a sort of hilariously twisty mess as they try to write around the places where Barton Was Dumb With A Marker.

The notes themselves range in content from grocery lists to What Phil Thought About That Episode of Bridezillas But Couldn’t Say Because He Was A Wolf to just how much, in excruciating detail, magic sucks. Phil comes perilously close to mentioning that he misses Barton falling asleep on his shoulder on ops and only barely skirts around the fact that he’s fonder of the archer than is strictly professional. It would be just his luck if Barton picked up on it and started bragging about being his favorite Avenger to the others. 

Four weeks in, he gives in to the temptation to lick Barton’s face while he’s a wolf. It’s worth it just for Barton’s reaction; he falls flat back on his ass and laughs so hard he cries a little. He doesn’t stop for almost a full minute, and when he does, he motions Phil up on the bed with the first real grin Phil’s seen on his face since this whole mess got started. Phil doesn’t remember having slept better in his entire life than he sleeps that night.

And then, five weeks in, Barton blows up spectacularly. Out of nowhere on evening, he growls and throws a book Phil recommended against the wall, and lurches violently to his feet. 

“I _hate_ this!” he screams, and Phil flattens his ears because not only is this a complete overreaction, it’s _loud_ and it hurts his stupidly sensitive hearing. Barton turns around and flips the bed, sending Phil’s suits sprawling and permanently ruining his suitcase.

“I can’t do this anymore!” Barton hisses. A shoe goes crashing across the room, followed by an empty soda cup. For a time, Barton paces around the room, slamming his fists into the walls and throwing anything that comes within his reach. Phil watches him, expressionless as ever, since he is in fact a wolf, until Barton collapses amidst the mess he’s made of the office. It doesn’t escape Phil’s notice that no matter how many things Barton threw, not a one of them came close to hitting him. Hawkeye has always had perfect aim.

Barton curls in on himself, shaking so slightly that Phil only barely catches it. He moves forward and nudges Barton with his nose; without further prompting, Barton turns around and wraps his arms around Phil, burying his face in the fur of Phil’s shoulder.

“Haven’t left the base in more’n a month,” he mumbles against Phil’s skin. “All I can do during the day is sit on your shoulder glaring down at everyone, and maybe flap my wings a little when you’re all being dumb. I have maybe an hour or two a day to practice on the range before dawn, and no one is ever there. Haven’t even seen real sun in forever.”

Phil gently licks his cheek, and excuses it on the basis that Barton needed the comfort. It seems to serve its purpose, because Barton laughs very weakly against him.

“Sick of being here, sick of being useless. I could, I could still _help,”_ Barton mutters, and Phil realizes that Barton’s falling asleep like this, tangled around him on the very uncomfortable industrial carpet of his office floor.

He settles down, bringing Barton with him, and allows it to happen.


	3. Chapter 3

First thing when he wakes up, Phil downs half a dozen aspirin in hopes that he’ll be able to walk without visible problems by the time he finishes his shower and gets dressed. It works well enough that nobody notices when he goes to collect his paperwork from the Secretary’s Desk.

He’s told, politely but firmly, that he has completely finished the backlog of paperwork that he’s steadily built up over the last six years, and there isn’t anything there for him. He tries to demand that they give him some of the new paperwork the Avengers are undoubtedly racking up, but the assistant in charge of the desk for the day insists that they must be completed by the agent currently handling the Avengers Initiative, which isn’t him. She kindly suggests that he take the day off and try to enjoy himself.

He walks back to his office, not trying very hard at all to disguise his remaining limp, and sits around feeling useless and sorry for himself. Barton’s words from the night before, _sick of being useless,_ seem to reverberate in his head, and he can already feel a migraine forming. If only he weren’t sidelined like this whole wolf-hawk-swan-princess thing was really debilitating. He could be out there, right now, managing the Avengers’ battles, if Fury didn’t have a stick up his ass the size of California. Clint couldn’t shoot, but he could—Phil bolts up, winces at the twinge in his back, and hurriedly gathers a sleeping Barton into his arms. He can move up to Phil’s shoulder when he bothers to wake up for the day.

He strides through the halls at probably a reckless pace, drawing glances from the other agents who’ve come in early. Somehow, the jostling fails to wake Barton up. He finally makes it to Fury’s office, and he should know better, but he bursts in without knocking. Fury glances up from his call, calmly presses the button to put whoever it is on hold without comment, and surveys Phil and the hawk in his arms with deep suspicion. Finally, he clears his throat.

“What can I do for you, Agent Coulson?” he asks, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smirk. Phil takes a deep breath, and begins to explain.

“I’ve been working with Barton to help him learn to fly in his hawk form, and he’s mastered the basics. It’s difficult to test his abilities further with only an indoor testing arena, but I believe he could manage in an outdoor environment with a couple hours of training to make the necessary adjustments. I have an idea for a communicator that could be rigged such that he could tap out information on the layout of battles in Morse code. He feels useless, sir—I believe we can make use of him.”

As plans go, it’s not the most eloquent phrasing Phil has ever used or his most intricate plot. He thinks that’s probably reason enough for Fury to approve it.

The Director’s lips begin to draw together, and Phil suddenly fears that he was being overly optimistic after all.

“You’ve both been confined to base for a _reason,_ Coulson. He’s vulnerable in that form.”

Phil shrugs. “He’s vulnerable as a human, too. As a hawk he is both a smaller and more agile target—I think it would be a fair assessment to say that he is actually in less danger while in the air that he would be as a human on a rooftop.”

Fury raises an eyebrow. Phil could have whole _conversations_ this way, and has when plausible deniability was an issue, so he knows what Fury is going to ask before he gets the chance.

Fury asks anyway. “I hear you cleaned out your six-year backlog of paperwork yesterday. You itching to get out on the field and rack up some more already, Coulson?”

“I’d like to be of use,” Phil replies tightly.

“And if there’s an aerial attack where flying would place Barton in the middle of things and get his ass killed before he had a chance to be of use?”

Phil, fortunately, is a fast thinker, and he’s got a ready answer for this one. “He wouldn’t be reinstated as an active Avenger yet, sir. He’d be drafted as a regular consultant. You call him in when it looks like his expertise could be useful. You don’t when it wouldn’t. Nothing special, nothing new to the agency, just plain old contract work.”

Fury stares at him with one judgmental eye, which used to be eerie but is now a strange sort of comforting and familiar, and then he nods. 

“You’ve got two days to certify that he’s air safe in moderately severe weather conditions, outfit him with a communicator, and get him whatever the fuck else a battle hawk needs. You’ll run the op we test him on, and if that goes well, we’ll see about getting the two of you back with the Avengers Initiative.”

For a moment, Phil thinks the excited squawk might have come from _him,_ until he realizes that Barton is awake in his arms and staring up at him with bright eyes. Barton pecks fondly at his shirt, and Phil smiles down at him before he can stop himself.

He realizes what he’s doing a split second too late, and darts a wary look at Fury. He isn’t surprised to see that menacing, _knowing_ expression creeping across the familiar face.

“We’ll begin the field testing at once, sir,” he says, and turns heel. It would probably be fair to call what he does next ‘running away’. Phil is man enough that he can admit to it.

For the first several hours they confine themselves to the small yard between the major buildings in the complex, fenced in by a mass of tangled barbwire. Barton swoops gleefully through the air, and Phil’s probably imagining it, but some of his shrieks sound almost like familiar laughter. Eventually, they move to R&D, where some helpful scientists rig up a wind tunnel and they test Barton on a number of increasingly tricky wind speeds and angles. Less than an hour before sunset Barton drops, exhausted, into Phil’s arms.

“I think he’s had enough for today,” Phil says, note entirely able to hide the amusement in his voice. He’s never seen Barton this willing to admit that he’s tired and in need of help. He finds himself making his way to his office and tucking Barton into a blanket nest with irrational gentleness. If he presses a kiss to Barton the hawk’s forehead without the excuse of being a wolf, well, no one needs to know.

“Rest well, little hawk,” he whispers fondly. He undresses and sits to write a note on the whiteboard for when Barton wakes up.

_Barton—  
I don’t know how much you were awake for, since apparently being turned into a hawk has not cured you of your fondness for playing dead, but I’ve got a plan to get us back on the field, and Fury has approved it. You’ll be above the battle, reporting on the status of agents and enemy personnel via tapping Morse code through a communications device strapped to your leg. Brush up on your Morse tonight, please. We’ll be testing the communications device tomorrow, and it would make everything a lot easier if you didn’t accidentally insult one of the scientists.  
I hope you slept well. And don’t you dare hold this against me once we get everything sorted out, but it was sort of amazing to watch you fly today.  
—Coulson_

He fires off a quick email to R&D to make sure they’ll have the leg-rig ready for Barton in the morning, and then settles onto the bed beside Barton the hawk, and waits for the change. It doesn’t take long.

For a while, he watches Clint sleep beside him, grateful to see the lines he remembers smoothed out by sleep and the tension in his shoulders from the night before thankfully gone. Finally, he drifts off to sleep himself. 

By the time he wakes, Barton is a hawk again and half-buried in the blankets beside him, but there’s a new note on their whiteboard.

_Phil,  
We’ve worked together for almost twelve years and been literally attached at the hip for five weeks. I think you should probably start calling me Clint.  
—C_

Phil maybe hums a little in a very embarrassing way as he heads for the showers with a freshly cleaned suit hung over one shoulder, feeling unusually prepared to face another round of battling with R&D over the best way to outfit a smallish hawk for the battlefield. He lets Barton (Clint!) sleep for another hour as he sorts, completes, and signs R&D requisition forms that have magically appeared on his desk overnight, and then gently nudges the hawk awake. Clint blinks up at him with bleary hawk eyes, but hops willingly enough onto his shoulder.

“Another long day, Bar—Clint,” he informs the hawk. If birds could eye people suspiciously, this one would be eyeing him. Clint pecks at his hair, which Phil chooses to ignore on the basis that he’s being helpful and informative and not at all weird and attached.

This time, they drop by R&D to pick up their brand new equipment first, and then take an agency car to Stark Tower. Phil fits a remote-operated parachute to Clint’s tiny body, fastens the communications device around his ankle, and lets him loose. For a moment, it looks frighteningly like Clint won’t be able to handle the high winds or the altitude. Phil’s hand jerks to the parachute trigger, ready to jump in and save him, and then suddenly Clint’s soaring comfortably through the air with a shriek that definitely sounds delighted. He stays up there for nearly three hours while Phil reads a book and keeps half an eye on him, and occasionally he comes to rest on Phil’s shoulder and peer at his book. His landings, Phil notes as he tries to hide a chuckle, definitely still need some work. It’s been months since he’s seen anything quite as funny as Clint half-crashing into a window of the tower, startling a researcher inside. Occasionally Clint taps out a message in Morse code, usually snide observations about pedestrians below, and it’s almost as good as the ops they ran together back before Clint got drafted for the Avengers Initiative. 

Finally, Clint comes back to land on Phil’s shoulder to stay. He burrows into Phil’s neck, and Phil reaches up to stroke his wings absentmindedly. The texture of feathers is frankly uncomfortable against the sensitive skin of his neck, but Clint’s probably exhausted, so Phil pulls him down gently and holds him in his arms instead. He hopes Clint hasn’t overexerted himself, because that’s a setback he really doesn’t want to deal with just yet.

Phil gets them back to the car and sets Clint on the seat beside him while he emails Fury from his phone to update him on the testing. Once they get back to base, he settles Clint the hawk, who is still asleep, into a simple nest of blankets for a nap. Then, he goes looking for Natasha.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she’s in the gym with Captain Rogers, showing him that particularly badass move she does with her thighs. Phil wonders if it will be just as alluring when Captain Rogers does it.

“Natasha,” he says, when he finally catches a pause in the rhythm of blows. She immediately disengages and, when she’s sure Captain Rogers has stopped, turns to face Phil.

“What can I do for you, Agent Coulson?” she asks, as professional as ever.

“We’ve found a way for Clint to work alongside the Avengers as a specialist during the day. I’d like to discuss some of the particulars with you—” he looks over her shoulder at Captain Rogers. He’s the unofficial leader of the team, so he should probably hear this too, but Phil isn’t quite sure he can bring himself to ask _Captain America_ for a favor like this. He’s half in awe that the man’s standing in the same room as him in the first place.

He sighs and plows in anyway.

“Actually, perhaps it would be best if I spoke to both of you.” He settles rather uncomfortably onto a vaulting buck and waits for them to join him. Natasha comes to stand directly in front of him, uncomfortably close, and Captain Rogers sort of hovers behind her. When neither of them makes a move to speak, Phil begins again.

“As I’ve said, we found a way for Clint to participate in enemy engagements as a specialist in his hawk form. He’s been training so that he will easily be able to fly above land and low-altitude battles and report via Morse code. I understand that it has been difficult to fit in time for him since the… incident… because of his separation from the team, but I was hoping the two of you would work a little harder to incorporate him in group activities during his time as a human. I think he’s beginning to suffer from the way he’s been forced to withdraw from a social life separate from work.”

Natasha nods, which is all the agreement he’s likely to get. Captain Rogers solemnly gives him his word that they will try to do better (and oh god Phil _does not_ freak out over having Captain America’s _word_ on something), and Phil nods very professionally back at them just as Captain Roger’s pager goes off. 

He flushes, apologizes, and takes off. Natasha follows him at a more sedate pace, but pauses in the doorway to study Phil. Her head tilts slightly to the side, a habit Phil knows Clint picked up from her, as she considers him. Then, very slightly, she smiles.

“You called him Clint,” she gently points out before she disappears into the hall. Phil isn’t sure whether he wants to laugh or cry. Maybe both. Before he can get the chance to follow them of his own free will, the alarm sirens start blaring and he scurries to central deck.

“Not now, Coulson,” Fury booms, from his place at the center of things, “I’ve got it on good authority that Hawkeye exhausted himself today. You get your ass back in your office and make sure he’s well rested for the next attack, ‘cause we’ll need him, but right now he’s too tired not to get killed. I don’t like it when my agents get killed.”

Phil wants to feel disappointed, but he has to admit that Fury’s right. He makes his way back to his office and tries not to feel too worried as the Avengers assemble for another skirmish with AIM.


	4. Chapter 4

Worry doesn’t do anyone any good, but they’re particularly lucky this battle. No one even cracks a rib, unless you count the junior agent stupid enough to throw himself at a tank. Clint sleeps through nearly all of it, and wakes just in time to watch Phil change from human to wolf in the split second between day and night. Natasha appears a moment later, sporting a bruised cheekbone but nothing worse.

“What happened?” Clint asks, brow furrowing in worry. “Another skirmish? Why didn’t they…?”

“You were out for hours this morning, and clearly exhausted,” Natasha answers his question without missing a beat. Phil offers her what was probably _literally_ a very wolfish grin. She grins back, and reaches down to pat him on the head. 

Natasha continues comfortably, “Look, Coulson’s been up all day stressing and watching over you to make sure you were okay, he needs his beauty sleep. We’re going out for sushi—Stark thought we should ask you as a sort of welcome-back-to-the-team thing. You coming?”

Clint shoots an almost guilty look at Phil before he nods, eagerly. He rubs Phil behind the ears, quick, and then follows Natasha out of the room. Phil jumps up on the bed and tries to fit in some extra sleep—it feels too big and too lonely when he has it to himself, but he finally manages to drift off.

It’s late when Clint creeps back into the room, but he curls up beside Phil on the bed and suddenly it is much, much easier to sleep. Phil wakes in the morning in time to watch Clint disappear in place of the hawk. He makes his way to the showers and for the first time in months takes his time, because he knows there isn’t anything waiting for him to do, but there will be soon. He manages to get most of the way dressed before the sirens signaling trouble blare through the base. He throws on the remainder of his suit and stops by his office to grab Barton, who is trying to burrow further into the blankets to avoid the noise. He fits Barton with all of his gear on as he hurries through the halls to central command. 

“It’s not AIM this time, and Dr. Reed has confirmed that he is not running any experiments that might result in this!” one of the agents calls across the room.

“The energy signature is similar to some forms of magic that various hostiles have utilized over the years,” another one adds. Phil starts, and then desperately begins to look for Fury, because now of all times _they need to be out there._

Fury sees him over the heads of various tech agents, gives him a slow nod, and Phil speeds off again to load himself and Barton onto one of the vans leaving for the scene. Within half an hour they are _finally_ on the field again. 

Phil is as close to giddy as he hopes he ever gets over the adrenaline rush of being back in action. Occasionally surveying the Avengers’ operations from headquarters is nothing compared to actually crouching in the scant cover offered by an agency car and hissing orders into a comm. Beside him is a code expert, deciphering Clint’s reports and steadily passing them to Phil; in his ear are the other Avengers, primarily Captain America, sending constant reports and requesting information about other areas of fighting.

“Hawkeye says there’s another portal opening twenty meters south-southwest of Iron Man,” the code expert informs him, and Phil dutifully relays the message. They still haven’t quite figured out which egomaniac is behind this last attack, but whoever it is keeps opening portals that dump particularly nasty monsters out onto the streets of New York. So far the Avengers are having a little too much fun with it; Stark is loudly declaring that he’s got twelve, and he wants to make this into a videogame and patent it. Natasha is trying to explain to him that _it kind of already is_ a game. Thor’s demanding to know what these games of ‘video’ are, and Captain America is probably wondering but refusing to show his ignorance. It’s weirdly adorable when he does that.

“Captain Rogers,” Phil says into his comm, in an attempt to put a stop to the bickering and get them to at least pretend to take this seriously, “Can you get them back on task?”

“I’m not sure _you_ could, sir, and I’m not even going to try. It’s not affecting their performance. Unless they stop getting everything that comes out of those portals, I’m going to leave them to it.”

It’ll have to do. Phil definitely does not squee a little inside and being called ‘sir’ by Captain America, either.

“Sir, another one, less than a meter behind Agent Romanoff,” the code expert beside him intones.

“Black Widow, get out of there,” Phil barks into his comm, and Natasha gracefully somersaults forward and lands by Captain America, just in time to avoid being zapped by some sort of monster than legitimately can only be described as a large turd with laser vision.

 _God,_ Phil missed being on the field. There is nothing quite like it to make everything else in his life seem uncomplicated and inconsequential. Far above, Clint the hawk lets out a screech, and Phil smiles fondly up at the form soaring through the air. He wonders, vaguely, if maybe Clint likes being a hawk like this, enjoys flying through the air and seeing everything beneath him. He always did have a fondness for high places.

Maybe tonight he’ll leave a note on the whiteboard, asking. 

“Annnnd, that makes fourteen! Who’s your daddy!” Stark calls gleefully over the line, and Phil doesn’t even feel the urge to bang his head against something hard and sharp, that’s how glad he is to be back in the field. “What the—” there’s muffled sounds of scrambling over the line, and then Stark at his most indignant shouting “Oh my god, he _shit_ on me! Little fucker, Barton, when you are human again—”

“Hulk smash thirty six!” The Hulk booms, so loud that Phil doesn’t even need a comm to hear him. This time as Stark grumbles Phil gives in, throws his head back, and laughs.

“Was that—?” he hears Stark ask after a split second of comm silence.

“Yes. You ought to get shit on more often, Stark, it’s hilarious,” Natasha says, and Phil chuckles quietly.

“Portal opening half a meter to Iron Man’s right,” the code expert informs him.

“Iron Man, half a meter to your right. Do you need me to send up a tissue so you can clean your face?” Phil asks, as innocently as he can manage. Stark swears at him for his trouble and blasts some sort of worm before it can even get all the way out. It freezes there, and after a moment the portal closes, cutting it in half and spraying Stark with green worm guts. Phil finds himself chuckling again. Stark’s enthusiasm in making up for his past actions after the incident on the Helicarrier had gone a long way towards making Phil find him less repellent, but a particularly petty corner of his heart would probably always find a little joy in things like this.

“Laugh all you want, this stuff’s gummed up my sensors. I almost had a lead on our evil mastermind pinned,” Stark’s voice cuts through Phil’s ruminations, and he refocuses on the issue at hand.

“Report, Iron Man.”

“I was picking up weird energy signatures that _looked_ fucked up enough to be magic. Now I’m gonna have to de-gunk the sensors before I can pick up much of anything.”

Phil holds back a sigh.

“Stark, get back to the tower and switch into a fully functional suit. We can hold them off here.”

“You sure?” Stark asks, a disgusting amount of snark in his voice.

“Hulk smash thirty-eight!” echoes across the block.

“I think we’ll manage,” Phil says, as dryly as he can manage. Stark snorts and takes off, and the Hulk smashes a thirty-ninth alien interloper. 

By the time Stark gets back, Hulk is in the fifties and Thor is sulking because he’s experienced a repeat of the slime that got Stark, only he made the mistake of electrifying his worm first, so it smells like burnt sewer.

“Still picking up on the weird energy signatures,” Stark announces as he swoops back onto the scene. “It leads to a warehouse maybe half a mile out of our battle radius. Want me to check it out?”

Phil doesn’t pause to consider. They’re doing well so far, but it’s only a matter of time before they tire and start to miss things.

“Take Captain Rogers with you,” he orders. Stark swoops down, snatches Captain America up bridal style, and flies off with him. Phil knows for a fact that it’s easier for both parties if Stark carries them huge-and-fly style, so he’s pretty sure Stark keeps pulling that move on the captain just to piss him off.

It’s kinda nice to know that Captain America finds Stark every bit as annoying and frustrating as he does. It’s also a lot easier to convince Fury that it’s ‘just a clash of personalities’ when you straight up refuse to work directly with the billionaire provider of most of the tech you use.

“Incoming, fourteen meters to the north of the Hulk,” the code specialist declares. Phil relays the information dutifully, but doesn’t order anyone to move. It’s far enough away that whatever it is probably won’t hurt the Hulk coming out, and the Hulk is more than capable of taking care of itself (“Hulk smash fifty-seven!”). Phil keeps an eye on the situation and an ear on Clint’s reports for another five minutes before word comes back from Stark and Captain America.

“Pretty sure this is the source!” Stark declares cheerfully, as a set of coordinates appears on the tablet in Phil’s lap. Captain America quickly overrides him.

“Sir, once Iron Man tracked the energy signal here, portals began appearing in a concentrated manner clearly designed to prevent us from drawing any closer. We’re stalled about thirty feet from the outer wall. We’re able to hold off the, uh, things that the portals spew out, but we’re unable to move closer. Requesting backup.”

“We should probably also mention that the energy signature is pretty damn close to whatever zapped you and Clint, so it’s probably the Enchantress.”

Phil sighs. Playtime over, then.

“Sitwell, take over for me here,” he barks, “I want agents on the field at once, dealing with the portals in the combat zone. I have reason to believe that they will calm down in the next five minutes. We’ll need to establish a second combat zone around these coordinates. Thor, you’ll remain with the agents in this combat zone and assist with any cleanup necessary. Assuming this is the Enchantress, we don’t need her any more volatile than she already is. Hawkeye, back to base. Black Widow, join me. The Hulk will take us over.”

The code specialist relays Cling’s very colorful refusal to be left behind as Natasha disengages from a sewer creature and climbs into her favorite crag on the Hulk. Phil scrambles out from his cover and joins her, dodging some sort of bull-creature and shooting a six-foot-long centipede in the process. He wonders, vaguely, if the portals lead to some other planet’s sewage system. He’ll have to make a note to investigate it further when he writes his report later.

He climbs up beside Natasha just in time for the Hulk to make the leap. They land beside the warehouse where Stark and Captain America are being held up with a resounding crash, and Phil ears a minor scratch from some flying pavement.

Captain America is battling another giant centipede, and Stark is trying to blast his way through some sort of amorphous blob. Natasha leaps off the Hulk and immediately engages some sort of crystalline humanoid creeping around the base of the warehouse. Phil takes a moment to survey the scene before him, and just barely manages to leap to safety before the Hulk takes on a massive roach.

He climbs to a ledge just above eye-level and tries to work on a strategy. The portal concentration is heavy, though very little seems to be coming out of most of them; probably they’re intended as a sort of barbwire fence keeping the perimeter secure. There are a few gaps they might exploit, except that they seem to be between the more active portals, and are well guarded by the creatures pouring out. It’s an entirely different situation than before, and it takes Phil a moment to figure out a course of action.

“Right,” he barks into his comm, “Stark, move over to that gap on your right and clear it up. Black Widow, Captain, you’ll be coming with me. We’re going to break through there and stop this at its source. Iron Man, Hulk, the two of you will stay out here and hopefully provide adequate distraction so that the Enchantress won’t find it necessary to start opening portals inside the warehouse.”

“Unless she’s completely stupid, she won’t,” Stark calls through the comm line. “Opening these in the interior of the building would cause the entire structure to collapse with her inside. She’s never been that dumb before.”

“First time for everything,” Phil mumbles, but he’s pleased with the revelation. Stark is probably right on this one, and it will make his job a lot easier. Into the comm, he says, “That’s good news, but I still need the two of you out here to stop as many of the creatures from pursuing us as you can. Any objections?”

There aren’t any. It still surprises Phil every time when a team of superheroes powerful enough to save the world obey his orders. He doesn’t give them often, because Captain Rogers is more than capable of leading the team, but this op means more to him than most, especially if it leads to the capture of the Enchantress. Captain America points the Hulk in the direction of the centipede (which the Hulk promptly smashes with a gleeful pronouncement of “Hulk smash fifty-nine!”) and helps Stark take out some sort of weird insect. Phil darts down from his lookout and Natasha joins them as Stark takes out another weird sewer-creature, leaving them just enough of an opening to dart through a gap in the wall of portals.

They dash across the short gap between the portals and the warehouse. The captain takes out another centipede with his shield, and then they’re darting through the door into the warm, heavy air of the interior.

It’s strangely quiet after the din of battle outside.

“I’m glad you could join us, Son of Coul,” the eerie echo of the Enchantress’ voice echoes through the building. “Prove to me that you are a worthy ally of my Thor, and I shall grant you an audience. You have a Midgardian hour to reach me, and I shall give you what you seek.”

Phil sighs. It’s going to be an ugly hour, he can tell already.


	5. Chapter 5

They make their way between heavy stacks of crates, as silently as they can manage. Phil’s comm buzzes in his ear, the code specialist relaying that Clint has arrived on-scene and has been patched through to a direct line with Stark. Phil wishes he were more surprised.

They make it another sixty seconds without incident, and just when he’s about to get really twitchy about traps and walking into them, they round the corner and come face to face with what can only be described as a sphinx. 

“Answer me this,” the sphinx intones, solemnly, “At night they come though you do not fetch them, and by day they vanish without being stolen. What manner of thing do I describe?”

For a moment, Phil stares at it, horrified. He has always been horrifyingly bad at riddles, and Natasha’s grasp on English is incredible, but sometimes fails in the face of wordplay.

To his left, Captain America snorts.

“Heard that one a dozen times. It’s the stars,” he says, sounding a bit smug for an All-American icon. Phil starts to lower his gun, expecting the sphinx to step aside now that its riddle has been answered. Instead, it lunges at them. Phil just manages to dodge to the side before a massive claw swipes through the air where he had been standing. Captain America hoists his shield, but Natasha gets there first, darting in and drawing a deceptively thin blade across the creature’s throat. It dies in a gurgle of blood, and Phil breathes a hopefully subtle sigh of relief. Too damn close. He should know better than to expect a self-styled Norse goddess to have foreign mythology down correctly. 

They move along, and Phil reflects that he kind of enjoys creeping through cliché warehouse-bases in search of the latest Big Bad. A couple of weird zombie-things leap down from off the crates. Natasha and Phil spend a good bit of time dodging them, because nothing short of decapitation seems to make much of a difference, and they’re both rather lacking in long blades. Finally, Captain America manages to behead the last one with his shield.

“Thank you, Captain Rogers,” Phil says, as he wipes sludgey zombie remains off the sleeve of his suit. It’s not his favorite, at least. Captain American gives him the same cross look he does every time Phil fails to call him by his first name, and then strides ahead.

They make it past several other traps and monsters the Enchantress has left for them, until finally Natasha throws her hands up in the air and declares that they’re just going to have to scale the crates and move across the top because she’s _bored,_ and the captain can block any shots anyone fires with his shield. Just as she prepares to do so, they round the corner and come face to face with the Executioner. 

Well, that confirms the presence of the Enchantress beyond a shadow of a doubt, Phil notes has he dodges a blow from the heavy axe. The captain’s already got his shield up and Phil can see that he’s looking around for other weapons, because the Executioner is a close-range fighter and his shield isn’t going to be of much use offensively here. Natasha gets off a few rounds of her widow’s bite, but it has little effect on the Asgardian. Phil tries shooting him, even knowing that it won’t do any harm, and he’s right, but the sound distracts the Executioner long enough for the captain to get a particularly brutal punch in. The Executioner doubles over and Phil is quick to scramble through the pockets of the field-issue belt strapped around his waist, searching for the disabler that R&D developed based on Thor. He isn’t quite quick enough—the Executioner is back on his feet and crashing the axe spectacularly against Captain America’s shield.

Natasha, clearly, sees what he has in his hands; she nods at him and flips over the Executioner’s head, providing a flashy distraction with a couple of her tiny knives. The Executioner rips them out from where they’ve pierced his skin and growls at Natasha, who deftly dances out of his reach. The captain slams into his face with the shield, knocking him back just long enough for Phil to slip in and whip the chain around his neck. It snaps tight to the Executioner’s skin as if magnetized, and he slumps over, just conscious.

Captain America brains him again with his shield. This time it does the trick. The Executioner groans and his eyes fall closed.

“Do we take him with us?” Phil asks, uncertainly. The Enchantress certainly never acts fond of her henchman, but she’s kept him around for an awfully long time for someone she doesn’t care about.

“Leave him. She’ll know he’s fine,” the captain decides, and Phil nods.

“We’re going _over_ the crates now,” Natasha says, in a tone that leaves no room for argument. She climbs up first, Phil and Captain America close behind her. After he gets over the surprise of not being shot at and/or leapt on by anything monstrous, it’s easy enough to see the glow of magic in the distance. The Enchantress must have been steadily leading them away from her, and frankly Phil hasn’t felt this stupid in a long, long time. 

The Captain signals them forward, and together they race over the top of the crates towards the source of the light. They find the Enchantress there, as expected, surrounded by a bubble of shining magic.

“Do we risk passing through it?” Natasha asks, looking at the captain.

Phil’s in a hurry, so he reaches out and pokes at the magic before the captain can answer. His finger comes back intact, not even singed. He nods at the captain, who nods back.

“Black Widow, I need you to secure her,” the captain orders. “I’ll keep watch for approaching threats. Agent Coulson, cover for us.”

Phil raises his gun obediently and searches the rafters for potential hostiles more intently than he had while racing across the tops of crates. Natasha and Captain America dart forward, and out of the corner of his eye he watches Natasha slip around the Enchantress’ attempts at flinging spells and slip her own disabler around the Asgardian’s neck. The magic surrounding her shorts out, and he hears Stark’s loud mechanical voice signaling a session of portal activity with an enthusiastic “Fuck yeah!” from outside. 

Adrenaline rushes through his body, and he realizes that he’s grinning in a way he wouldn’t normally in front of the team; the captain is eyeing him suspiciously and even Natasha is giving herself away with a slightly raised eyebrow.

He composes himself, pulling his expression back in on itself. “It’s good to be back,” he informs them, letting some of his sincerity bleed through into his voice. He hears a hawk screen outside, and remembers why exactly he’s here.

“Stark, is Hawkeye’s curse broken?” he asks into his comm.

“I didn’t see any love’s true kiss action going on, Phil,” Stark replies cheerfully, which is a good enough answer on its own. Smartass.

The captain finishes fastening a pair of binders around the Enchantress’ wrists and, in the strangely gentle but firm way he has, he pushes her toward Phil.

“You want to share why the curse didn’t short out with the rest of your magic?” Phil asks, a little wearily. He shouldn’t have expected it to be that easy, but he really wishes it had. The rest of the op had gone so, so well for his first day properly back in the field.

The Enchantress smiles at him, in a guileless way that somehow completely fails to make her seem less dangerous.

“The others required an active, constant input of magic from me,” she answers in her pretty bell-like voice. “A curse would not. I’m afraid chaining me won’t be of any use to you in this matter, Son of Coul.”

“Then we’re going to need you to undo that curse of yours.” Phil crouches a little in front of her and fishes out his favorite thumbscrew. He doesn’t like torture very much, but the Enchantress doesn’t need to know that, and Natasha’s here in case anything becomes necessary. _She_ certainly doesn’t mind a little quality time with a prisoner and a nice set of thumbscrews, especially because it’s so very cliché. Natasha has a healthy appreciation for clichés. 

The Enchantress smiles, and lets out a breathy little chuckle.

“I can end the curse easily enough, provided you let me go.”

That was easier than expected. Phil’s already been stupid once tonight; he isn’t about to fall for this very obvious trap.

“So we just let you go, and you’ll end the curse? We have your _word_ on that?” Phil asks, skeptically. The Enchantress’ smile doesn’t fade.

“It is simple enough, Midgardian,” she explains, so condescending that Phil has to fight the urge to grind his teeth. Something about her sets him on edge. “When I cursed the two of you, I intended it as a disability. I did not think you would prove so creative as to take advantage of the unique skills your alternate forms lent you. I can hardly have an Avenger able to fly above the battle with no job other than to report the whereabouts of enemies on my hands. And you must release me, because I cannot undo the curse without my magic, and you cannot hold me if I have it. It’s a simple enough trade, I should think.”

“We don’t _bargain_ ,” Captain America growls, but Phil holds up a hand.

“She has a point, and she’s hardly a great enemy of SHIELD,” Natasha points out, before Phil can say the same. 

“She’s an enemy of Thor, and that makes her an enemy of the Avengers!” the captain protests.

“I’m hardly an enemy,” the Enchantress points out, sounding amused, “Thor will very much enjoy what I do to him if ever I capture him, good captain. Perhaps you’d like a demonstration?”

She grins up at the captain and licks her lips, ever so slightly. Captain America blushes a vivid scarlet.

“I should call this in to base, let Fury make the call,” Phil adds, belatedly. Truthfully he should have called it in the moment the Enchantress was secure. The cessation of the portals is a bit of a giveaway—Fury will know he delayed and have his ass for it later during his debriefing. He almost winces at the thought.

“This is Avengers business,” Captain America snaps, glaring at him. Phil stares him down, trying very hard not to think about how this is his childhood hero. Natasha, ever the one to be practical, glides in between the two of them.

“This is Agent Coulson and Agent Barton’s business,” she says, first giving Phil a very understanding look and then shooting the captain a mildly reproving one. “They’re the ones who have been cursed, and they’re the ones who should get to decide what happens. If the Enchantress is returned to SHIELD, they will never let her go, and the opportunity to have her reverse the curse will be lost forever.”

“We don’t know for sure that she’ll reverse it if we free her,” Phil points out. Natasha nods gracefully.

“We don’t. If we keep her in custody, we may be able to find another magic practitioner able to reverse the spell, and we might not. Every decision comes with a risk in this scenario.”

“If we keep her in custody, we can always _make_ her reverse it later,” the captain says, scowling.

“By letting her go, when? A year from now, when her thing for Thor has morphed into a vendetta against all of SHIELD? She certainly won’t reverse the curse _then._ And even if she doesn’t reverse it now, we still have the same options as if we kept her—Strange, or someone else who can screw around with magic.”

“We should still—”

Natasha interrupts the captain with a hand clapped over his mouth. She stares at Phil, her eyes as understanding as her jaw is tight and immutable. 

“Call’s yours, Phil,” she says.

“Make your decision, mortal,” the Enchantress says from behind Natasha, looking utterly entertained. “Risk losing me for no gain, or risk being stuck in that form forever and gaining me as an enemy. Oh, Thor was right, this realm is _delightful._ ”

Phil reaches for his gun, and the Enchantress actually giggles.

“No mortal bullet will wound me, foolish man.”

He aims at her anyway. Clint’s out there somewhere, in the air, and if he takes the Enchantress up on her offer, Clint will presumably plunge to his death without wings to keep him up.

“You need to get Barton to the ground after you change him back,” he says, and the Enchantress shrugs with the same innocent smile she keeps flashing at him.

“Not a part of the bargain. Do you not trust your team to catch him when he falls?”

For a moment, Phil considers.

“Take it off her,” he says to Natasha, and she moves away from Captain Rogers does as she is ordered. The chain slips over the Enchantress’ throat and she breathes deep, stands, and waves a hand. The binders fall from her wrists. She waves her hand a second time, and there is an all too human yelp from outside and a roar of the Hulk. Phil closes his eyes and hopes to god that the Hulk actually manages to catch Clint.

She gives him one last disarming smile and then disappears. Captain America smashes his fist against a crate, splintering the wood and nearly sending the entire stack tumbling down on them.

“This never happened,” Phil says, glowering as best as he’s able at the captain. “We fought her and managed to wound her badly enough that she was forced to stop using her magic to create portals. We don’t know why she reversed the curse on Hawkeye and I. Are we clear?”

Natasha, who probably trusts him as much as she trusts any living human aside from Clint, nods. Captain America is slow to follow, but finally he does.

“Understood,” he says in terse agreement.

They make their way back through the warehouse, once again atop the crates, and finally emerge into sunlight.

Evidently the Hulk was occupied elsewhere, because Clint is tangled bridal-style in Stark’s arms, making teasing kissy-faces at the mask. Stark’s face is still obscured, but Phil can tell from the way he holds himself in the armor that he’s laughing. He’s ridiculously grateful that Clint has a team, now, to catch him when he falls.

“It’s good to have you back, Clint,” Phil says warmly as he jogs over to join them. Clint flops his head back to look at Phil upside down.

“Good to be back,” he grins.

It occurs to Phil, perhaps belatedly, that by the time they return to base junior agents will have vanished the paraphernalia of living in his office, and it will be back to being just a desk and a worn old couch in a smallish room. Clint won’t be by his side all the time, and the notes on the whiteboard that he’s grown used to waking up to will stop. He’ll be back in his quiet, empty apartment off base, filling his hours with paperwork and marathon reality television.

For a moment, his future seems unbearably lonely, but then he remembers that the trade-off is a return of evenings on the couch in the rec room, watching bad cartoons and the history channel with Clint, finally able to mock it face to face again. It seems a fair enough trade. Phil will miss his constant presence, but hopefully not that much.

“Hey, boss?” Clint asks, still staring at him upside down from Stark’s arms. “Do I even still have a room on base?”

Phil smiles, because clearly Clint has been thinking along the same lines he has. He feels strangely light at the thought that maybe Clint will miss him just as much as he will miss Clint.

“I’m sure they’ll have one put together for you by the time we get back,” He says, and Clint rolls his eyes and flips gracefully out of Stark’s hold. Phil is about to say something, he’s not even sure what, when the comm buzzes in his ear and reports of injuries and captures begin to stream in.

He shrugs at Clint and turns to handle the start of cleanup. Talking will have to wait until later.


	6. Chapter 6

On Fury’s orders, Phil goes straight to his apartment after cleanup that evening. He luxuriates in his California King bed and tries to ignore the fact that it seems cold without Clint. All his food is spoiled, and he shovels everything from the fridge straight into a trash bag, dumps it in the bin, and leaves early enough in the morning to have time to stop by Starbucks for a pastry and coffee. By the time he gets to his office, the rickety single bed and the detritus of daily life have completely disappeared, just as he expected. It’s easy enough to settle in and admire the fact that some industrious junior agent had even preemptively brought him the paperwork from the portal incident and stacked it neatly on his desk. He lifts the first stack of forms off the top of the pile just as someone opens the door.

“Hi,” Clint says, rubbing the back of his neck and looking kind of ridiculously bashful. “I came by for my, uh, paperwork. Stuff. I bet there’s a shitton of forms between the whole hawk thing and the incident at the warehouse. Also, uh, nice to see you again. Face to face. The beak made things look funny.”

Phil tries not to laugh, but he’s pretty sure he fails to hide the quirk at the corner of his mouth, a dead giveaway. Clint grins in return.

“Your paperwork should be available for pickup at the Secretary’s Desk, as usual, and it shouldn’t be as much as you think. I did most of the forms regarding the curse prior to the solution, so you should only have to sign a few things and fill out a report about what happened when it ended,” he informs Clint, letting a small smile show. “Was there anything else?”

“No, sir,” Clint says, and he shrugs, but he’s still grinning. “Sorry to bother you.”

Clint turns to leave, and Phil realizes that despite his grin he’s holding his shoulders in that particular way he does when he’s tense. Phil suddenly realizes what he must have just sounded like.

“Clint,” he adds, before the archer can leave. Clint freezes almost comically. “It’s nice to see you again too. Face to face.”

Clint turns a little to look at him, and his grin has been replaced with a genuine smile. He nods, once, and then vanishes through the doorway.

Phil returns to his paperwork, which easily passes the time until his lunch break. He grabs something from the SHIELD cafeteria because frankly he doesn’t want to spend another fifteen dollars at Starbucks for food, and he downs the cafeteria food quickly in an attempt to ignore the complete lack of flavor and the horrifying, rubbery texture. When he gets back to his office, the whiteboard has reappeared on his desk. There’s a note on it, but he takes a moment to pick it up and hang it back on the wall before he reads it.

_Phil,  
Teambuilding Star Wars marathon in the fourth floor rec room, 20:30. Please rescue me/join in.  
—C_

Phil stares at it for a moment, surprised by his own surprise, and then he laughs aloud. For the first time in probably decades he’s actually _ahead_ on paperwork, and he should be free in the evening. He makes a note of when and where, and then erases the message from the board and sits down to finish up the last of the paperwork from the portal incident. His lie about the Enchantress’ escape is neat and vague enough that he’s confident it won’t raise any eyebrows. He even has the time to sort out applications for new agents, most of whom will wash out in under a week and never even learn that SHIELD is not actually a minor branch of the CIA.

He grabs dinner in the overpriced diner behind the Starbucks, and finishes up the last rounds of paperwork by seven that evening. The rec rooms at this particular headquarters are not the worst he’s suffered, but he’d still rather not spend over an hour waiting around on one of the sticky vinyl couches for the others to arrive, so he digs out the paperback novel that’s been sitting in the bottom of his desk for nearly six weeks. He finishes the last four chapters just in time to walk down to the rec room.

Clint’s already there, with Natasha curled up on his left and Stark watching the captain hungrily from one of the arm chairs off to the side. Phil has the horrible idea that this is probably all Stark’s idea as a means of continuing Captain America’s introduction to the twenty-first century. Banner has dragged a chair to a position closer to the door, the better to escape if he feels a little stressed. Thor, it seems, is not coming. He’s probably already gone back to Asgard.

Clint, not surprisingly, spots him first. 

“I told you he’d come!” he crows, and Stark whips around to face Phil, a wrinkle appearing between his eyes. “He fucking loves Star Wars, man.”

Stark sniffs self-importantly.

“Only because he doesn’t understand the blatant disregard of basic physics,” Stark says, not snidely, before he turns back around and begins fiddling with an overcomplicated remote.

“I minored in physics, actually,” Phil says, wondering if Stark has rewired the room, _again,_ and whether or not it’s really necessary that he write a report on the matter. Stark presses a button and the lights dim.

That answers that question, then.

Stark grunts noncommittally, as if doubting that a suit could ever have studied _real_ science, and flips the movie on. Phil searches for a place to sit and realizes that the only seat remaining is the third position on the couch, to the other side of Clint.

He half-wonders if Clint engineered that on purpose, because there definitely used to be more chairs in here. He makes his way through the dark room as the beginning sequence rolls, and sits next to Clint.

It’s weird, being this close while both of them are human. He can actually hear Clint’s breath as he sits beside him, quiet under the music of the movie but definitely present. He considers the last few weeks, never being alone, and the loneliness that didn’t swamp him the day before, or all the night alone in his bed, hits him like a ton of bricks. 

Oh.

He’s known for years now that what he feels for Clint Barton is not entirely professional. He just didn’t quite realize… _oh._

The funny thing is, he thinks he might have felt this way all along. Beside him, Clint shifts, and their shoulders brush. He can’t stop himself from freezing, and he sees Clint glance at him out of the corner of his eye, questioning in the scant light cast by the movie screen.

He makes an abortive sort of motion that must tell Clint _something,_ because Clint relaxes and lets his shoulder linger against Phil’s, warm.

He’s known Clint for a long, long time. He knows his strengths and his weaknesses and every single tell the archer has. He’s seen Clint in lust and love and watched him have sex undercover as his handler. He’s seen Clint bruised and broken and once, when Clint was much younger and a day went very, very badly, he saw Clint cry. He’s been pressed up against the agent in a few very compromising positions himself, and he’s cut contact and let Clint work on his own for months at a time when the situation called for it.

Clint’s hand drifts, unthreatening, until it lays on the couch between them, gently pressing against Phil’s thigh. This, whatever this is, is entirely new. Phil can’t believe that it’s coincidence, hopes with every fiber of his being that he’s not reading too far into things, hopes that Clint knows exactly what he’s doing. Phil has never wanted anything quite so much in his entire life.

(In the background, he can half-hear Stark explaining to the captain that there are three Star Wars movies, released during the late seventies and early eighties, and it’s such a blatant lie that Phil almost pipes up to correct him before he remembers just what the other three movies were like.)

Clint shifts again, the movement bringing him just a hair closer to Phil’s side. He can’t possibly be misreading this. For now, he will let it be, because the middle of a Star Wars marathon with half a dozen people likely to catcall and otherwise behave in a completely inappropriate manner is not the place for the discussion they need to have. Phil isn’t a stupid enough man to let this, whatever this is, fester between them.

(Natasha doesn’t have Phil’s dedication to good science fiction; she’s telling Tony off and explaining the three prequel films and why Tony had lied to Steve at the same time.)

Around one in the morning, Clint shifts against the couch and settles onto Phil’s shoulder. Phil turns, carefully, so as not to dislodge him, and sees that he’s fallen asleep. He looks around the room; Stark, likewise, has curled up in his chair and fallen asleep. Natasha too, with her feet pillowed in the captain’s lap. Banner has disappeared. Only the captain is still awake, watching the screen with wide-eyed awe.

He shouldn’t, but it’s late, and he has things to see to in the morning, Phil lets his eyes drift shut and falls asleep.

He wakes when the movie blasts the end credits, as does Stark. Either Natasha was never asleep, or she utilizes her eerie ability to snap between sleeping and waking even off the field. Beside Phil, Clint wiggles and snorts quietly in his sleep, and Phil rolls his eyes and pokes him in the side.

“Get up, time to go home,” Phil says to him, as Stark sleepily asks the captain what he thought of the movies. Clint grunts and curls up against him, and Phil instinctually shoves him away. The couch is narrower than he realizes, and Clint goes sprawling on the floor.

It wakes him up at least.

“Sleeping in here until they get me a room again,” Clint mumbles, climbing back onto the couch even as Phil stands. He stares up at Phil from under heavy eyelids.

“You could always come back to my place,” Stark adds, apparently having been tracking the entire conversation in addition to his own with the captain. “Bruce is already there, and pretty soon I’m gonna convince Steve. I’m a collector, what can I say?” Stark sweetens the bargain with an expansive grin. Phil rolls his eyes and maybe just barely tamps down the urge to punch Stark in the jaw. _Collector,_ indeed.

“Naw, s’all right,” Clint slurs, rolling over so that his face is buried in the back of the couch. “Just find me a blanket and I’ll be fine, slept in worse. They’ll have something for me by tomorrow.”

“You’re going to sleep on a couch when I’m offering you a custom-made Hypnos?” Stark asks, sounding genuinely appalled.

“Yup. Not a thing to collect. G’way now, sleepin’.”

Stark throws his hands in the air, every bit the drama queen, and swans out of the room with Captain America trailing behind him. Phil decides that now would be a poor time to bring up the plan to ultimately move all of the Avengers into Stark Tower, whether they like the idea or not. Without saying a word, Natasha glides over to the cupboards that line the back wall and procures a military-issue blanket, which she settles gently over Clint. Clint smiles against the couch and curls up a little smaller.

“’Night, Nat,” Clint mumbles, and Natasha slips out of the door with something dangerously close to a fond smile on her face. Phil moves to follow her.

“You too, Phil,” Clint says, and for a moment, Phil’s heart nearly stops. It’s the first time Clint has said his name, his first name, aloud. It sounds different than he expected, but strangely wonderful all the same. “’Night.”

Phil can’t quite stop himself from echoing Natasha’s fond smile. They’ve done this a dozen times before, on a dozen missions, in a dozen different hotel rooms. It seems so familiar and so different here in the rec room of SHIELD headquarters, when Clint has any number of other places he could choose to be.

“Goodnight, Clint,” he responds, and he slips out of the door to drive home to his own off-base apartment. The trip is uneventful, and he’s heading straight for his bed, stripping as he does, when a file on the shelf catches his eye. It’s an old one, and he’s had a copy of it at his private residence for years. He read maybe a quarter of it before he concluded the SHIELD psychologists were full of horse-shit and proceeded to educate himself on the matter of Clint Barton: Asset of SHIELD. Now, he flips it open, prepared to be amused by all the little details that he knows are completely wrong. There’s a page-long discussion of Clint’s sexuality that Phil had dismissed offhand on the grounds that it clearly displayed homophobic underpinnings, and a few genuinely hilarious paragraphs about Clint’s “natural inclination towards obedience.” Clint’s a hard read, he’ll give them that, but _still._

He flips forward a couple of pages and smiles a picture of Clint, age twenty-two, scowling at the camera and looking as if he believes the entire world is out to get him. It’s a fascinating contrast to the Clint he knows now, who is far more open around the eyes and freer with his smiles. Phil thinks maybe he’s had something to do with that, and warmth blossoms in his chest. He turns the page and fondly reads a paragraph from the middle:

_Barton has displayed certain tendencies towards imprinting on males aged 5-10 years older than him. While he has been uncooperative regarding discussions about his brother and their relationship, we believe he likely had a co-dependent bond with Barney Barton. There is some risk that he will try to replicate that bond if allowed over-frequent contact with another male in the proposed age range, particularly if that male fills the role of caretaker. A female handler or a series of different male handlers is suggested._

Phil raises an eyebrow, because there is no way Clint’s going around attaching himself to older men as a replacement for his brother.

And yet… Clint has always hung around him more than necessary, and the lingering has only increased and been augmented by touching since they spent so much time in each other’s company. And through all that, never has he once noticed lust in Clint’s eyes, or anything that might indicate anything more than innocent affection. He knows for a fact that Clint is sexually comfortable with men, has seen him engage in sexual acts with them while on missions, but he has no idea if that comfort or even preference extends to Clint’s real life, outside of SHIELD and missions and near-death experiences.

He has to believe that Clint feels something more for him than a weird brotherly bond.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to unread the report. They will need to have that talk, either way, but Phil desperately hopes it doesn’t go the way he suddenly fears it might.

He doesn’t sleep well at all.


	7. Chapter 7

For the first time since college, Phil finds himself actively procrastinating. He knows that he and Clint need to have a heart-to-heart, and _soon,_ but he can’t quite bring himself to say something and risk shattering the fragile thing they’ve build between them. More than anything he wants to stay home and _think_ for a while, figure out what to say and when to say it, and come back with a _plan._ He wants to have contingencies in case Clint’s casual touches and lingering looks don’t mean as much as he hopes, in case Clint decides to screw himself over again, in case…

Phil likes to be prepared.

It would be a lot easier to get that way if Clint didn’t seem to be everywhere. By the time Phil gets to work there is already a dartboard installed in his office, with a purple dart still sticking directly out of the center. There’s also a note on their whiteboard insisting that they meet for lunch, which is unfortunate, because Phil had been planning to use his half-hour to start developing The Plan On How To Discuss Feelings With Clint Barton. 

Phil decides to take an early lunch.

Frustratingly, Clint plops down in front of him five minutes after he clocks out, pushes his tray of semi-soggy cafeteria food aside, and replaces it with takeout from the Chinese place four blocks down the road. Clint doesn’t say anything, just grins and digs into his own box of takeout as Phil opens his to reveal his favorite Mu Shu Pork, but their knees and feet keep knocking together in a very unsettling way. Phil finishes up his lunch with five minutes to spare, and leaves with a small smile and a quiet thank you. Clint reaches over and snags his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze, and Phil’s heart almost stops from the gentle smile Clint is offering him. He tries his best not to shake his head or look otherwise affected, and leaves the cafeteria.

Clint’s there, again, when he goes to the gym for his afternoon sparring session. He’d been negligent of them during his time changing into a wolf—he’d only visited three or four times in a week, reluctant to take Clint to a room with large things that could potentially fall and smash him, and reluctant to leave him behind. 

Now Clint is grinning, wide and open, and offering to spar with him. 

“… Alright,” Phil says, because he can’t think of a reasonable excuse not to. Their arms and fists and bodies lock together in a familiar dance. Phil feels too aware of every touch, too large for his body and too small to hold the sensations that run through him. Neither of them speaks, lost to the familiar rhythm of the sparring pattern they worked out years ago. Occasionally one of them will break it, to keep the other on their toes; Phil manages to sweep Clint’s feet out from under him, and Clint laughs. Clint flips him over his head when Phil offers a hand up, and this time it’s Phil who can’t quite keep from laughing. After, Clint quietly mentions that he promised Nat a round; Phil leaves to shower and change back into his suit.

At exactly seven pm, Phil pushes his chair away from his desk, packs his briefcase with a small stack of the remaining paperwork on the curse. Phil leaves his office, and maybe Clint actually has been following him all day, because he’s there the moment Phil walks out his door, slouched and comfortable and grinning.

For a while neither of them say anything; Clint just smiles serenely as he strolls along beside Phil, and Phil tries not to give into his exasperation and clock Clint across the head. Phil, who is willing to admit that he’s maybe overthinking things, is the first to snap.

“Barton, why are you following me?”

Clint, unfortunately, does not look phased by Phil’s tone or the use of his surname.

“Want to get some dinner?” he asks instead, and it isn’t precisely what Phil was expecting. It sounds a lot like a date, and Phil would like that very much, thank you, but he can’t bear the thought of another meal sitting across from Clint, in silence. Or, worse, trying to make small-talk, like any good date, and having too many inside jokes and classified stories to properly expound upon in public. He doesn’t want to sit across a table and feel like other people are watching them, or even really remember that there are people in the world besides the two of them, him and Clint.

So he answers, “I’m tired, Clint. I really just want to go home.” He expects Clint not to react, or maybe even to look a little disappointed this time. Instead, Clint’s grin morphs into a smile.

“No problem, boss, we’ll go to your place and order pizza and watch crap TV. You look like you need to wind down.”

Phil wishes he didn’t find it quite so endearing that Clint can tell how tense he is, and knows the best way to remedy that. It would make the whole thinking thing a lot easier.

“Alone, preferably,” he says, and he tries to sound insistent. Instead, it comes out just short of a question.

Clint tilts his head, observing him.

“No, I don’t think so,” Clint says, after a moment, and he sounds almost triumphant. “C’mon, I’ll let you drive and we can even watch Supernanny re-runs. You know how much I hate that show.”

Phil does. Though Clint has never corroborated his theory, he suspects that some of the incidents of poor parents and psychotic children remind Clint of his own childhood in the foster system. He’d like to say more, try and convince Clint that he _really does want to be alone,_ but Clint is standing on his heels, hands in his pockets, focusing that intense gaze entirely on Phil. He knows this stance all too well. Clint is not going to budge, and something in Phil just… gives in.

“Alright,” he says, “But I’m more in the mood for a Survivor marathon. What do you think?”

“I’ll trade Survivor for Hawaiian pizza,” Clint agrees, and he leans in to nudge his shoulder against Phil’s. Right. They’re doing this, then.

“We’ll get half Hawaiian and half Meat Lovers,” Phil decides, as they pass through security and into the garage. “You know how I feel about pineapple.”

Clint chuckles quietly. Phil’s old fix-up mustang is on the second level, and he climbs in as Clint slips into the passenger seat. Clint immediately begins fiddling with the radio; Phil backs the car out of the parking spot as the strains of a Billy Joel song fill the car. By the time he pulls out of the garage and into traffic, Clint is gleefully singing along with the radio. Phil’s known for years that he can sing—it came handy on ops more often than one might expect, and Clint sang constantly on every road trip they ever took.

Clint’s moved on to really terrible eighties pop when they finally pull into the lot of Phil’s apartment complex. Clint already has his phone out, ordering pizza for the two of them, and he trails behind Phil as Phil climbs the stairs and lets both of them into his apartment.

It’s strange to have Clint here, in his space, where he has never belonged before; but good, too, like coming home for the first time. God, if this didn’t work out Phil was going to be so burned.

He watches Clint putter around the place, making himself comfortable; Clint peers into the fridge, and sighs. 

“Still no groceries, huh? C’mon, we’ve got at least an hour to wait for the pizza, let’s get you some beer.”

And Phil, because at this point he honestly does kind of want to be a little buzzed for the inevitable conversation this evening, agrees. They walk to a perfectly adequate little market just down the street because it’s a beautiful, cool evening. If Clint walks a little too close, Phil tells himself that it _could_ be because of the chill breeze that’s picking up, and reminds himself sternly to be prepared for all contingencies. It is by no means a given that tonight will end the way he desperately, desperately wants it to.

They secure the basic necessities; bread, milk, some apples and a few frozen meals to tide Phil over until he can properly stock up. On the way back they pick up a case of cold beer from a gas station, which is thankfully free of attempted robbery. They put it all away in Phil’s small, neat kitchen and then Clint gleefully makes his way into the living room, claims the remote, and flops down on Phil’s couch. He looks like he’s spent a dozen evenings here before, even though Phil knows he’s never visited.

Phil hesitates in the kitchen for another moment, and then settles onto the couch beside Clint, doing his level best to keep from wringing his hands like a nervous teenager on his first date. Clint happily flips through the Tivo until he finds Phil’s backlog of Survivor. Halfway through an episode, the doorbell rings, and Clint beats Phil to getting and paying for the pizza. Clint maneuvers it so that’s it’s between them on the coffee table as two men on screen scream largely bleeped-out insults at each other, and then disappears into the kitchen to retrieve the beers. He sets one down in front of Phil—without a coaster, which would be more annoying if the coffee table weren’t already in such shabby shape—and then gleefully digs into a massive slice of Hawaiian pizza.

“It’s nice to know some people are crazier than me,” Clint says around a mouthful of pizza, as the fight on-screen escalates.

“The couple we had to tag-team in Beirut didn’t give you your life’s fill of crazy people?” Phil asks, amused, as he takes a smaller bite of his own slice of pizza.

“That dude was fucking insane,” Clint agrees, happily, “but his was like, clinical. He told me he’d been diagnosed with something, can’t remember the name, but it was _intense._ These are just normal people who are crazy.”

It makes a weird sort of Clint-sense, Phil supposes. 

“That woman in Tai Pei, on the other hand…” Clint grins at him, heartrendingly genuine, and Phil bites back the urge to say something stupid. 

“The one who kept following you around and tried to convince you that she was a Brazilian dancer?”

“Yeah,” Clint laughs, “and she had that stupid polyester costume that was two times her size, and she couldn’t even keep a beat!”

“She broke into your hotel room, didn’t she?” Phil snickers.

“Yeah. Not really my type, though,” Clint says, and he’s giving Phil that strange (unless Phil is willing to hope more than he wants) look. For a moment, time seems to pause between them, with Clint’s eyes sparkling and his mouth turned up in a half-laughing smile.

“Clint—” Phil begins, at the same time Clint says, “So, I’ve been—”

They both stop, and then Clint continues. It’s a habit born of long practice; if they both have something to say, Clint is usually closer to the mission, so Phil accepts his input first. Clint can’t quite seem to meet Phil’s eyes as he speaks.

“So, uh, I’ve been thinking. About, uh, when we were cursed, and I just… I miss you, you know? I mean, I always, I like to spend time with you, that’s not new, I just…” Clint huffs out a frustrated sigh and rakes a hand through his shore hair. Phil sits, stupidly frozen, and waits for him to continue. After a moment, Clint looks up, and his eyes take Phil’s breath away.

“So…” Clint tries again, without breaking eye contact. Even Phil cannot stop himself from more than hoping, this time—he believes. “I…”

For a moment, they’re just silent, staring at each other. Some dim part of Phil’s brain registers the noise of the show in the background, the pizza cooling in front of them, the cold beer leaving a ring of condensation on his coffee table because he still hasn’t said anything about coasters. And then Clint bites his lip and reaches out, hesitantly, to brush his fingers gently along Phil’s jawline.

“I love you,” Phil blurts out, because this is far, far more than he can handle. Clint’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, and then his hand slips around Phil’s neck and pulls him in for a kiss that _blows. Phil’s. mind._

It’s gentle and dirty in a way that suits Clint entirely too well; just a brief press of lips before Clint licks against him and presses into Phil’s mouth and carefully sucks Phil’s brain out through his tongue. After not nearly enough, Clint pulls away just a little, so that their foreheads and lips and noses are brushing.

“Wanted to do that for way too long, sir,” Clint mumbles against his mouth, and Phil pulls him into another kiss as Clint’s calloused fingers draw gentle circles on the back of his neck.

“Yeah?” Phil pants when he finally pulls away. He’s too old, really, to be going without oxygen for this long. He doesn’t actually care.

“Yeah,” Clint says, and drags Phil down on top of him, “Do anything to convince you that I’m worth keeping,” he adds, as he brings another large, warm hand up to frame Phil’s face. 

“I kept trying to get away so I could come up with a plan for this conversation,” Phil mumbles against Clint’s lips. “Kept getting in my way.”

“S’what I’m here for,” Clint says with a shadow of a laugh. His hand has moved from Phil’s neck down his shoulder to his waist to slip up under Phil’s shirt. As Clint carefully trails a line of fucking _fire_ up Phil’s side, Phil realizes belatedly what he meant, before.

“Hey,” he says, pulling away. “You don’t need to do anything to make me know what you’re worth, you know that, right?” He leans down to press a kiss to Clint’s forehead. “You’re enough on your own.”

“’Kay,” Clint says, looking a little delirious. 

When they fall into bed, it feels like home, like something they were almost doing already.


End file.
